Friday, 1 January 2010

Resin charms with Gel du Soleil

In my other blog, I've written a long ode to Gel du Soleil, a single-part epoxy "resin" by JudiKins that is cured with UV light. Theoretically, it can be cured in sunlight, but November in Skåne is not the best time and place to test that... I had to give up after 30 hours of barely no sun at all. But as luck would have it, my dad has this old UV-lamp for philatelistic purposes, which turned out to be perfect.

I really like not having to mix a two-part resin -- that can be really messy -- and the need of UV light means the resin will stay liquid as long as I want it too, unlike the usual epoxy resins. The bottle also make the resin super-easy to apply. Small bubbles can easily be removed by keeping it close to a lighter flame. And if you accidentally scratch the surface of touch the resin before it's fully cured, it will disappear with a new layer of resin covering it. It's a bit smelly, but not worse than many other things I work with.

Above you can see my first charms I made with the resin, using Patera pendants and NunnDesign image transfers. For the charm on the right I used a piece of a "vintage perfume label" sticker. Unfortunatly, I didn't think of sealing it so the resin seaped through the sticker, making it darker than I meant it too. Still think it turned out OK, though.

I bought the small 0,3 oz (9 ml) bottle and my only worry right now is how long it will last. Because the bottle is black, to keep UV-light from curing it already in the bottle, I can't see how much resin is left. Nor does it help to shake the bottle. My fear is that it will run out halfway through a project.

There are still times when other resin may be a better choice, but for the rest of my projects, I'll probably stick to UV-curing epoxies.